1. The change of Surveillance and its issues
Privacy, sense of self and Facebook as a case of study
Alessia Vidili 20097344
Chiara Artini 20097355
Digital Media as (Global) Technologies of the (Networked/Hybridizing)
Self/Community
Charles Ess
June 2010
University Of Aarhus
Information and media studies

2. 2
Introduction .........................................................................................................................................4
First Chapter.........................................................................................................................................5
An evolution on the concept of surveillance: from Panoptical model to performative surveillance
.................................................................................................................................... Chiara Artini 5
1. Definition of surveillance ................................................................................... Chiara Artini 5
1.1 The connection of Orwell and Foucault’s ideas regarding modern society and the
technological change ............................................................................................. Chiara Artini 6
1.2 Spreading of surveillance................................................................................. Chiara Artini 7
1.3 Different types of surveillance......................................................................... Chiara Artini 8
1.3 Changing in the concept of surveillance......................................................…Chiara Artini 10
Second Chapter..................................................................................................................................14
Surveillance and privacy ............................................................................................ Chiara Artini 14
2. About privacy legislation.................................................................................... Chiara Artini 14
2.1 Changes in privacy with web 2.0...................................................................... Chiara Artini 17
2.2 Privacy infringements with 1st
level of surveillance ........................................ Chiara Artini 18
2.3 Privacy infringements with 2nd
level of surveillance........................................ Chiara Artini 18
Third Chapter .....................................................................................................................................22
Surveillance, the sense of self and identity ............................................................... Alessia Vidili 22
3. Need to be watched or control of oneself......................................................... Alessia Vidili 22
3.1 Surveillance like a vicious circle ....................................................................... Alessia Vidili 24
Four Chapter ......................................................................................................................................26
A case of study: Facebook.......................................................................................... Alessia Vidili 26
4. Facebook and Surveillance................................................................................. Chiara Artini 26
4.1 Filters of Facebook........................................................................................... Chiara Artini 30
4.2 Recent events on Facebook privacy................................................................. Alessia Vidili 32
4.3 Facebook and “itself”....................................................................................... Alessia Vidili 33
4.4 Are we in the centre of our network? ............................................................. Alessia Vidili 34
4.5 Stereotypes and social pillory.......................................................................... Alessia Vidili 35
4.6 “Feel at home” on Facebook............................................................................ Alessia Vidili 37
4.7 An OFF always under surveillance ................................................................... Alessia Vidili 37
4.8 Who has the power?........................................................................................ Alessia Vidili 38
Fifth Chapter ......................................................................................................................................40

3. 3
New ethics.................................................................................................................. Alessia Vidili 40
5. Click on “accept” and become a fashion victim web 2.0.................................. Alessia Vidili 41
5.1 Difficulties in ethic research............................................................................ Alessia Vidili 42
5.2 Decentralize Web it could be a solution......................................................... Alessia Vidili 45
5.3 Ethics conclusion with a sum .......................................................................... Alessia Vidili 46
CONCLUSION......................................................................................................................................48
References..........................................................................................................................................49

4. 4
Introduction
What we want discuss in this paper it is about surveillance and its contradictions. This concept is
quite complex and it has been discussed a lot by many scholars.
Our aim is to investigate how the change in surveillance has generated and increased privacy
contradictions and how it affects social behaviours reshaping the sense of self and identity. In this
change play an important role Web 2.0 and social networking practice.
Web 2.0 and social networking sites have allowed the active user participation in the online world.
We assert that social networks and the new user role enable an ongoing change in the concepts
mentioned above.
We decide to take in exam a case of study to understand better this surveillance change and its
implications. We have found in Facebook the best example in which surveillance and its
contradictions are more evident.
At the end we have tried to answer to the main questions that we highlight during our discussion
through the new ethics research and develop.
In the first chapter we discuss how the concept of surveillance has changed and if today through
the social network practice we can talk about two levels of surveillance, one generated from the
institutions and the other one generated by users.
In the second chapter we highlight how the concept of surveillance crash with privacy and what
issues emerge also in order to the second level of surveillance. Moreover we suggest if today in a
social network context we can continue to use same laws to protect privacy.
In the third chapter we explore how the sense of self and identity can be linked to the concept of
surveillance and in which sense. We notice that concept of self is mediated in a mutual
surveillance society and we consider if surveillance is like a vicious circle.
In the fourth chapter we examine Facebook as a case of study highlighting its relation with
surveillance, privacy infringements, social pillory, sense of self and identity.
In conclusion in the last chapter we discuss about lacks in ethics and we suggest that there is the
need to create new solutions in four sphere: ethics research, privacy problems, design, user ethic.

5. 5
First Chapter
An evolution on the concept of surveillance: from Panoptical model to
performative surveillance
What we want to discuss in this chapter is the question of surveillance. What are we thinking
about when we talk about surveillance nowadays? How is this concept changing over the years,
and why? Has web 2.0 and the practice of social networking, in particular, that makes possible the
active participation of users in the online world influenced this change?
What we are asking is if today we could continue to speak about surveillance in a Panoptical view
or even if with the advent of social networks something has changed? There is a massive online
participation by people that put a lot of information about themselves and can also see the
information of others. In this sense maybe we can recognize another level of surveillance that is
becoming more and more important during recent years and is going to overlay in the ‘classical’
idea of surveillance ascribes to the institutions detaining the power. So maybe we have to discuss
two levels of surveillance?
1. Definition of surveillance
Nowadays, what do we mean by the concept of surveillance? Many people thinking about this
concept tend to see it as the everyday practice of collecting, monitoring, observing, storing and
categorizing people’s data, such as personal information, behaviours, movements etc, in
governments and company databases for different purposes.
As David Lyon said “precise details of our personal lives are collected, stored, retrieved and
processed every day within huge computer databases belonging to big corporations and
government departments.” (D. Lyon 1994, p. 3)
Another important feature of surveillance is that it is imperceptible and invades our privacy; often
we are unaware when we are under surveillance, we don’t know when ‘they’ spy on us and we
“don't know what they know, why they know, or with whom else they might share their
knowledge” (D. Lyon, 1994, p. 4) about us.
But this concept “is not new” (D. Lyon 1994, p. 22). Many scholars during the past years have
studied surveillance, and this vision of surveillance that today we are accustomed to thinking
about came from the two most important surveillance studies of our time - George Orwell in his

6. 6
book Nineteen Eighty Four written in 1948 about Big Brother and from Michel Foucault, in his
book Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison from the 1975, about the reinterpretation of the
Panopticon model of Jeremy Bentham.
The first idea of Orwell is about a totalitarian state “that uses a huge bureaucratic apparatus,
'though police', and the figure of 'Big Brother' on the ever-present telescreen to intervene in the
smallest details of its citizens' daily lives “(D. Lyon 1994 p. 57).
This apparatus is imperceptible but at the same time it is ubiquitous, so people don’t know when
they are under surveillance and lost completely their personal privacy.
The second idea of the Panopticon1
prison comes from Jeremy Bentham but was reinterpreted by
Michel Foucault. He saw in the vision of Bentham’s Panopticon, a model that suggests the
organization of power in modern society, but rather than Orwell’s idea, Foucault’s power‘s view
didn’t come only from one organisation, a military institution in that case, but it was spread in all
of society becoming part of different spheres of society like government, companies, workplace
and military institutions. (D. Lyon 1994)
Foucault observes the modern society as a ‘disciplinary society’ “in which techniques and
strategies of power are always present”(D. Lyon, 1994, p. 26) “to ensure that life continues in a
regularized patterned way” (D. Lyon, 1994, p. 7). So in this view Foucault sees the connection
between the Panopticon prison and modern society. The difference from Orwellian view is that
today the state doesn’t use surveillance in a violent or totalitarian way or doesn’t use it only to
gather information about illegal issues, with the help of computer and the information revolution
nowadays the state could gather information to manipulate people and their consensus.
1.1 The connection of Orwell and Foucault’s ideas regarding modern society and the
technological change
Why are these two metaphors so important today? As we said before many people recognize in
these two ideas of Orwell and Foucault the modern concept of surveillance, but why? We can
1
Jeremy Bentham, the British philosopher and social reformer, published his plan for the Panopticon penitentiary in
1791. Essentially, it was for a building on a semi-circular pattern with an 'inspection lodge' at the centre and cells
around the perimeter. Prisoners, who in the original plan would be in individual cells, were open to the gaze of the
guards, or 'inspectors', but the same was not true of the view the other way. By a carefully contrived system of
lighting and the use of wooden blinds, officials would be invisible to the inmates. Control was to be maintained by the
constant sense that prisoners were watched by unseen eyes. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to be private. (D.
Lyon 1994, p. 62-63)

7. 7
reflect, translate and recognized these two metaphors in our modern society because there are
many characteristics of them that take part in it.
We said that surveillance today is used by the state and other corporations to gather and monitor
personal information and movement of people, and it is ubiquitous and invades our privacy.
So in this sense coming back to the metaphors, we have in each case a vertical and hierarchical
power that put under surveillance all the individuals to maintain social control and to know every
details of citizens’ lives. In each case the surveillance is used in an invisible way. But perhaps the
idea of Foucault could be nearer to the modern organisation of society and his power than
Orwell’s dystopia, because Orwell’s vision is only about one totalitarian power originating from the
central state rather than a disciplinary and normative decentralized power belonging to few
institutions as said by Foucault.
1.2 Spreading of surveillance
During the twentieth century there was a big technological revolution that caused what today we
call the electronic surveillance or “new surveillance”.
Gary T. Marx pointed that there are “numerous ways in which electronic technologies portend the
'new surveillance'. Particularly relevant here are these characteristics: they are invisible,
involuntary, capital rather than labour intensive, involve decentralized self-policing, introduce
suspicion of whole categories of persons rather than targeting specific individuals, and are both
more intensive and more extensive.” (D. Lyon, 1994, p.68)
This revolution was made possible by the birth, development, and spread of computer databases
and the advent of the internet.
As pointed out by Jonathan Zittran in his book “we can indentify three successive shifts in
technology from the early 1970's: cheap processor, cheap networks, and cheap sensors2
” (J.
Zittrain 2008, p.205). The combination between these three factors take an easier access to the
exchange, gathering and recording of personal data life of individuals.
This caused a massive diffusion of electronic surveillance involved in all the society, so from this
starting point governments, companies, and other institutions made and extensive use of
surveillance technology to find, gather and exchange a large number of information thanks to the
connection between different computer databases and networks in general. Corporations, thanks
2
See Paul Saffo, Sensors: The Next Wave of Infotech Innovation, http://www.saffo.com/essays/sensors.php (last
visited June 1, 2007)

8. 8
to information technology, used more and more the practice of computer matching to link data of
individuals and group of individuals for the creation of different types of categories.
Because surveillance is involved in all of life “the distinction between criminal records databases
and more general computerized system for government administration have become increasingly
blurred over the past few decades” (D. Lyon 1994, p.69).
Institutions continued to improve their surveillance techniques and every year spend a lot of
money in the creation and development of specific systems and new technologies to do this.
Every time and every where we are under surveillance ,“computers record our transactions, check
against other known details, ensure that we and not others are billed or paid, store bits of our
biographies, or assess our financial, legal or national standing.” (D. Lyon, 1994 p.4) In addition
surveillance ensures “that terrorism and drug-trafficking are contained, that we are made aware
of the latest consumer products available, that we can be warned about risks to our health, that
we can vote in elections, that we can pay for goods and services with plastic cards rather than with
the more cumbersome cash, and so on.” (D. Lyon, 1994 p.5)
Many people think that for these reasons surveillance is not so bad. Today “we live in a society
obsessed by risk” (D. Lyon et al. 2006, p. 11) so this causes a social panic in individuals that ask for
more protection by the state and corporations to feel safe and secure, in particular after 9/11. But
this extended use of surveillance caused many issues related to the concept of privacy. Often
people don’t know how much information about them is gathered and processed and they don’t
know when this information is used or if their data are transferred in others databases of other
countries. But we are going to discuss more deeply these problems regarding privacy in the second
chapter of this paper.
1.3 Different types of surveillance
Now we want to discuss briefly different existing types of surveillance, depending on technology
used, to better understand how this concept has evolved and spread in a huge way during the
years in relation to the technological revolution. Also we want to understand why today we live in
a surveillance society where people are constantly under surveillance.
When we “think in terms of surveillance society It is to throw into sharp relief not only the daily
encounters, but the massive surveillance systems that now underpin modern existence. It is not just
that CCTV may capture our image several hundred times a day, that check-out clerks want to see
our loyalty cards in the supermarket or that we need a coded access card to get into the office in

9. 9
the morning. It is that these systems represent a basic, complex infrastructure which assumes that
gathering and processing personal data is vital to contemporary living.” (D. Lyon et all 2006, p. 1)
We provide our information to institutions, without thinking about it, through our bank accounts,
ID cards, driving license, health insurance, taxation and so on.
In this sense we could say that often people forget that surveillance is expanded and developed in
different public and private settings because of the massive presence of surveillance technologies.
Several technologies are situated behind all of these settings starting from computer databases
connected to the internet, to the GPS (global positioning system), RFID (radio-frequency
identification), CCTV (closed-circuit television), mobile phones, satellites, scanners etc.. and in
relation to technologies are used and developed several practices in surveillance like biometrics3
,
telephone tapping, categorization and profiling of people, data-mining4
, statistics, customer
surveys, geographical tracking etc…
All these technologies and practices are massive used, in relation to each setting aim. Military
apparatus and government use surveillance for fighting criminality and threats to maintain safe
and secure our country and also for financial questions, medical sphere uses surveillance for
“monitoring and tracking individual disease cases”, “recording occurrences of disease for statistical
analysis” and “screening whole populations to identify individuals or groups at higher than average
risk for a disease” (D. Lyon et all 2006, p. 12), companies use surveillance to protect their
customers (think about sensitive information of bank accounts) or for marketing purposes, like
understanding people credentials, likes and dislikes, needs and wants.
It is not a case that when you browsing the web you find in web pages advertising related to your
place, or related to something interesting for you. These because “they know where you are” (C.
Ess 2009, p. 33), they record your IP address, so they know your location and they registered all
the cookies related to what sites you have visited. In this way they could know better customers
and direct advertising.
3
Biometric surveillance refers to technologies that measure and analyze human physical and/or behavioral
characteristics for authentication, identification, or screening purposes. Examples of physical characteristics include
fingerprints, DNA, and facial patterns. Examples of mostly behavioral characteristics include gait (a person's manner of
walking) or voice. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance)
4
Data mining is the application of statistical techniques and programmatic algorithms to discover previously
unnoticed relationships within the data.. Data profiling in this context is the process of assembling information about
a particular individual or group in order to generate a profile — that is, a picture of their patterns and behavior. Data
profiling can be an extremely powerful tool for psychological and social network analysis. A skilled analyst can discover
facts about a person that they might not even be consciously aware of themself.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance)

10. 10
We could understand better this thing with the example of Amazon. “Amazon.com uses
sophisticated data-mining techniques to profile customers, using both obvious and nonobvious
relationships between data. This enables them to show who is most likely to buy what but also
which customers are likely to be credit risks ”(D. Lyon et all 2006, p. 8) “These techniques enable
both descriptions of patterns of behaviour and predictions for behaviour within a reasonable range
of accuracy. They assume that a given customer will replicate the patterns of others before him
whether or not these patterns are obvious or not”(D. Lyon et all 2006, p. 21).
1.3 Changing in the concept of surveillance
In the last years the concept of Web 2.0 came into society and revolutionized the era of
informational technology. One of the important features of Web 2.0 is that it puts the power into
the hands of the users. Users for the first time can create contents and share these contents on
the web with other people.
Web 2.0 also allowed the birth of many social networking sites, this induced a large shift in the
concept of surveillance. People have started to connect with many other people globally thanks to
social networks and the ability to share photos, music, status updates, and beliefs.
At this level it is not a company that asks for your information or “steals” your information but
now you have the power to decide what kind of information you want to share with others. All this
information remains on-line so all of your friends can see data and other things about you even if
you are offline. At this point another level of surveillance begins to takes place on the other level.
As we said before people are accustomed to only one view of the concept of surveillance, a
vertical view where few people watch many people. This kind of surveillance comes from the
state, business apparatus, the army and so on, but what we want to suggest is that with social
networks things are changed and start to take place with a new view on surveillance- an horizontal
view where many people watch many other people.
Today people are accustomed with social network sites to share and gather information with/by
others, which has caused a need to watch and to be watched by others, so in this sense we could
speak about a different type of surveillance.
Many scholars talk about this new type of surveillance from the advent of the practice of social
networking. They define surveillance as voluntary, participatory and performative because this
kind of surveillance comes directly from the users.

11. 11
As pointed out by Arders Albrechtslund “online social networking seems to introduce a
participatory approach to surveillance, which can empower, and not necessarily violate, the user”
(A. Albrechtslund 2008, p.2).
Or in the view of Anna Reading “voluntary surveillance has become part of our entertainment and
leisure in which we sign up to both reveal ourselves and watch others, managing and editing public
profiles and acts within electronic space over time.” (A. Reading 2009, p.93) So in this vision A.
Reading says that with the practice of social networking surveillance has taken on a perfomative
meaning, she says that “SNSs offer new possibilities for staging the self and its co-costruction with
other users.“(A. Reading 2009, p.94)
In this sense users become not only passive objects of surveillance, like before, but active subjects
of surveillance because they watch others, and others watch them.
In this new idea of surveillance we have two different standpoints. Albrechtslund gives a positive
meaning to the concept of participatory surveillance rather than Anna Reading, who gives a
negative meaning to what she calls performative surveillance.
Albrechtslund observes many benefits in the concept of participatory surveillance like, “user
empowerment, subjectivity building and information sharing.” (A. Albrechtslund 2008, p. 12).
Social networks give benefits to the concept of participatory surveillance because “the monitoring
and registration facilitates new ways of constructing identity, meeting friends and colleagues as
well as socializing with strangers. This changes the role of the user from passive to active, since
surveillance in this context offers opportunities to take action, seek information and communicate.
Online social networking therefore illustrates that surveillance - as a mutual, empowering and
subjectivity building practice - is fundamentally social.” (A. Albrechtslund 2008, p. 16)
So he sees social networks in the form of participatory surveillance as a way of self-expression, a
tool to keep in contact with friends, to keep people informed about your life, what you are doing,
what your feelings are and so on.
Instead, Anna Reading sees in what she calls participatory surveillance a negative meaning. She
argues that today in the 21th century people need to watch and to be watched by the others and
“surveillance has proliferated” by the users “not least because we desire it - we enjoy it, play with
it, use it for comfort.” (A. Reading 2009, p. 97)
In this continuous need to “perform” surveillance, A. Reading sees a negative point for users, that
is the invasion of their privacy. So now, not only the central state or companies invade our privacy
to gather our data but the users too contribute to the privacy infringements. Often, not only

12. 12
people share every kind of data about themselves, but put into social networks information
related to other people without their consensus - posting videos, photos and other information.
Simply, when people do this they don’t think about others’ privacy, but think about their need to
demonstrate that they are alive in the online world expressing themselves in connection also with
others. Doing this people don’t think about that information are stored in databases for a long
time, “Danah Boyd has suggested that online social networking as a mediated public is
characterized by four properties:
- persistency, because the communication is stored indefinitely.
- searchability, makes information available at the convenience of a few keywords and phrases
instead of time - consuming collection and sorting information.
- replicability, online social communication can be detached from its specific media and perfectly
reproduced, even altered, and put into other contexts.
- invisible audiences - even though people obviously communicate online with a specific audience in
mind, the public nature of online social networking makes the information available to a much
larger audience, potentially everyone with access to internet.” (A. Albrechtslund 2008, p.6)
The fact that we use social networks sites a lot sharing the major part or all our personal
information make possible a switch in what before should have been private information
becoming public information. So in this sense we can say that now we cannot understand well
what is private and what is public. Because even if we are offline, most parts of our lives are
continuing in the online world, which means that many people could see our information and put
us under surveillance.
This spreading of information plays another negative role in the performative surveillance, which
is social pillory. Many people were fired from their work, or lost an occasion to find a good job
only because they are involved with social network sites.
The conclusion is that today surveillance is ubiquitous and with social networks expanding more
and more, there are many that watch many as Jacoob lina Jensen says when he talks about the
internet as an omnopticon. “We are currently witnessing an 'omnopticon', where everybody
watches everybody via a complicated networked of mutual, mediated surveillance, mass media
phenomena and 24/7 activities on the Internet." (J. Linaa Jensen 2007, p.371) An interesting point
is that “the power is not more in the hand of few but it is ‘dispersed and it becomes more difficult
to trace the responsible agents’" (J. Linaa Jensen 2007, p. 371)

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In this view of many that watch many we could suggest that the concept of surveillance is different
today, and maybe we could talk about two levels of surveillance- one belonging to the
government and companies and the other belonging by the user. So today we essentially cannot
choose, and we are always under surveillance all the time. On the contrary we contribute to the
expanding of surveillance more and more. Maybe we could reinterpret the title of Anna Reading
article The Playful Panopticon? suggesting, on the basis of what we discussed previously, that it is
not a playful Panopticon but may be a playful Omnopticon?.

14. 14
Second Chapter
Surveillance and privacy
As we said in the previous chapter the concept of surveillance is going to crash with the concept of
privacy, causing many upcoming privacy issues and some contradictions.
Following the definition of Tavani the concept of “informational privacy”5
nowadays is more risky
than before.
Since the computer database era, the advent of internet and all the practices connected to the
information gathered by corporations, our personal data has become to be in risk. With the
advent of Web 2.0 and in consequence the easiness to add information online, this risk is
augmented more and more.
What we want to highlight in this chapter is that since the 70’s corporations started to think about
how to solve problems concerning surveillance and privacy, developing laws for the data
protection. But maybe could be difficult to defence others’ privacy, because we are living in a
society with different cultures and in consequence with different laws in this matter from country
to country.
Has this group of laws created by institutions and companies from different places caused any
problems? Does the practice of social networking influence and augment the invasion of privacy?
Could we talk about two layers of privacy like in the case of surveillance? Are there any
consequences belonging to the clash of these two concepts? Is it possible today to continue to use
the same laws developed in past years? Should the laws change in relation to social networking
practice?
2. About privacy legislation
As we said before today we live in a society obsessed by risk, so for this reason people ask for
more protection by the state and military apparatus, definitely “this can confer personal and social
benefits, but at the same time the conception of safety and security has important implications for
liberty, privacy and other social values” (D. Lyon et al. 2006, p.12)
5
informational privacy is a matter of our having the ability to control information about us that we consider to be
personal (H. Tavani 2007, in C. Ess 2009, p.57).

15. 15
In fact as C. Ess (2009) highlights, today we ask for more protection, but the government to give us
more protection needs more of our personal information, so to guarantee the right of privacy and
the feeling of safety and security we have to be put under surveillance by the others, which seems
to be a big contradiction.
Thanks to computer database, computer networks and all the technologies and practices that
today are used to gather and control information, privacy is more invaded that before.
“Government database and private institutional database also continue to raise privacy issues,
particularly in the realms of consumer credit reporting, health records, and financial data”(J.
Zittrain 2008, p.214), but “how secure are databases from unauthorized access or leakage? What
extent should data be permitted to move from one sphere to another?” (D. Lyon et al. 2006, p. 9)
In relation to informational privacy that is the most affected by surveillance we could say that
surveillance is ubiquitous every time and it is complicated to check where our information goes
and for what purpose they are collected, because we leave our information in the hands of the
state, business, bureaucratic apparatus and so on, but when we leave this information often we
don’t think about the risks that may be occurring and “we passively consent to its use” (J. Zittrain
2008, p.203). For this reason “since the 1970s, much reflection and legal discussion of surveillance
has occurred, producing data protection laws in Europe and privacy law elsewhere.“ (D. Lyon et al.
2006, p.6) “Many countries have enacted sectoral and general laws for data protection, and most
of these laws have established some form of specific enforcement and supervisory machinery.” (D.
Lyon et al. 2006, p.82)
For example the United States developed in 1974 the privacy act that “mandated a set of fair
information practises, including disclosure of private information only with an individual's consent,
and established the right of the subject to know what was recorded about her and to offer
corrections.” (J. Zittrain 2008, p. 202)
The European Union also gives more importance to informational privacy and data protection. In
fact “the OECD6
, the Council of Europe7
and the EU8
are among the most prominent contributors to
the evolution of principles and rules for limiting surveillance and invasions of privacy, mainly with
regard to information privacy.” (D. Lyon et al. 2006, p. 81)
6
OECD (1981) Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data. Paris: OECD.
7
Council of Europe (1981) Convention for the Protection of Individuals with Regard to Automatic Processing of
Personal Data (Convention 108). Strasbourg: Council of Europe.
8
Especially European Union (1995) Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the
Protection of Individuals with Regard to the Processing of Personal Data and on the Free Movement of Such Data,
Brussels: OJ No. L281, 24 October [The EU Data Protection Directive]

16. 16
In specific “the E.U. Data privacy directives define what counts as personal and sensitive
information, and require that individuals be notified when such information is collected about
them. Individuals further have the right to review and, if necessary, correct information collected
about them.”(C. Ess 2009, p.55) “Finally, the Directives insist that when such personal information
is to be transferred to third parties outside the E.U., such transfers can occur only if the recipient
countries provide the same level of privacy protection as encoded in the E.U. Directives.”(C. Ess
2009, p.55)
In general we could say that there is a big interest by many organisations in issues caused by the
clash between surveillance and privacy, so for this reason they have developed some general or
specific laws, concerning certain sectors or practices, dealing with the limitation of use and
gathering of personal information. Even if these organisations are from different countries, in their
laws or declarations we could find some common factors.
“They write that an organisation:
• must be accountable for all the personal information in its possession;
• should identify the purposes for which the information is processed at or before the time of
collection;
• should only collect personal information with the knowledge and consent of the individual
(except under specified circumstances);
• should limit the collection of personal information to that which is necessary for pursuing the
identified purposes;
• should not use or disclose personal information for purposes other than those identified, except
with the consent of the individual (the finality principle);
• should retain information only as long as necessary;
• should ensure that personal information is kept accurate, complete and up-to date;
• should protect personal information with appropriate security safeguards; (D. Lyon et al. 2006
p.78)
But on the other hand there is a big difference from country to country, what for a country is
important to protect in many cases for another it is not a matter of privacy. In this direction
different cultures affect the concept of privacy. We could continue to speak about U.S and
European Union. As we said before EU pay lot of attention in problems related to privacy and
surveillance rather than U.S where “by contrast, data privacy protection is something of a
patchwork. In general, national or federal regulations address privacy issues with regard to health

17. 17
matters, leaving the rest to either individual states and/or business to work out.” (C. Ess 2009, p.
55)
An example, about this difference, comes from C. Ess (2009) in his paper when he speaks about
the IP address. Through the IP address your movement on the web are tracked and many people
could gather some information about you, just think about many e-mail clients that allow you to
see the IP address of another person. Even if for the EU is something that has to be protected
because it is a matter of privacy, for the U.S the IP address is not considered like a personal
information.
Beyond the governments “private companies, trade associations, and public authorities have
formulated their own codes of practice and protocols, and online merchants have adopted privacy
statements or policies.” (D. Lyon et al. 2006, p.79)
Privacy policies, usually presented inside terms of service, justify which personal data a web site or
a company could gather about you, the aims of the gathering and how they will use your
information in the future. Often people agree giving the permission to the personal data
treatment to a company, without ever read the terms and conditions of a specific kind of service
use.
2.1 Changes in privacy with web 2.0
As we said before web 2.0 makes a big change in computer and internet era, more and more
information could be add and share in the online world with other people, but this in consequence
has amplified issues concerning with the concept of privacy. “The ease of online sharing can
provide outlets of support and connection”, “online information is often searchable, can be viewed
by unintended audiences, and is not easily deleted.” (The GoodPlay Project 2009, p.10)
Come back to the social networking practice, people today join lots of social network sites,
because their other friends are there, they can socialize with new people, they can express
themselves and purchase and share lots of information, in this sense in social network it is possible
for them to “maintain records or record fragments on one another” and “share these records with
thousands of others, or allow them to be indexed to create powerful mosaics of personal data” (J.
Zittrain 2008, p. 222)
But what are the implications with privacy? We are going to speak about two levels of implication,
like in the surveillance case. The first level is about privacy infringements caused by the first level

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of surveillance and the second it is about privacy infringements related to the second level of
surveillance.
2.2 Privacy infringements with 1st
level of surveillance
When you are joining a social network, usually you give the right to a company of using without
time limitations what you share in your online profile - your photos, chats, ideas, things and so on.
Your profile information are always stored and searchable in database, so lots of companies can
use your data and data of others to categorize and target customers for direct marketing
strategies. Companies take lots of advantages from social networks: personal data are voluntary
give by users, in the major part these data are correct because people tend to share true
information and by the interactions between users it is easy to analyse networks and categorize
information. (Soren Preibusch, Bettina Hoser, Seda Gurses, and Bettina Berendt 2007)
Social networks allow companies to gather data easily, to categorize their customers through their
likes and dislikes and to organize marketing strategies based for the creation of targeted
advertising.
But this practice of data mining and users categorization can infringe privacy laws, it is impossible
to let know to a user how his data are used. “It is impossible to predict the results of data analysis
conducted with technology designed to discover nonobvious relationships and patterns within sets
of data. This means that companies are unable to inform customers fully as to the use of their
data, as the categories produced by data analysis are emergent.” (D. Lyon et al 2006, p.41)
2.3 Privacy infringements with 2nd
level of surveillance
The second point it is about issues related to performative surveillance, or voluntary surveillance.
If you are in a social network you have relations with other people with which you share and
exchange information.
Basically in your profile you have your “friends” (real or unreal) and this means that your
information are in part contain in your friends profile, in this sense “the record of person A that
states that person B is a friend also contains information that is part of B’s record.”(S. Preibusch
2007, p.4)
When you put your personal data in a social network, you lost the control of them. Data could be
registered, by all your contacts and group components which you take part, re-edited and spread
in future years too. Therefore your or another person privacy could be threatened.

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If you public some information (like a photo for example) about you and another person or you
and a group that you joint, you could infringe their privacy. (S. Preibusch 2007)
C. Ess (2009) gives us in his paper an example about infringements in others privacy. The fact is
that we usually tend to think that our privacy is protected and when we are in a private setting we
feel safe, but it is not true.
Maybe we should think that today distinction between private and public is blurred and not clear.
He says: if I’m at a party in a friend’s house and I’ve drunk more than normal and I’m starting to
sing and someone record me, I don’t think that may be the day after I could find that video on
Youtube, or on my Facebook profile because my friend tags me.
This means that we have to start to get worried about not only what we share when we are
online, but also what the others can share about us.
This means also that people usually think only about their privacy and not to others privacy, they
imagine privacy as an individual concept rather than a collective concept (The Goodplay project
2009).
Today people want to play with surveillance and “perform” in the online world, because they want
to express themselves and they need to watch and to be watched, but they don’t think about
privacy problems. This can caused another problem: social pillory. If you known that your
neighbours or your professor could read information about you online, would you continue to
write that in the same way? Are you sure that you would like to read information or see photos
about you when you will find a work?
Maybe people have to think about of what information share about them and about the others,
because in this sense the two levels of surveillance overlay. You could perform with surveillance
posting information about you and the others, but after companies and the state store, collect and
check this information for many purposes. There are lots of cases of graduate students that cannot
find job of their dreams or cases of people fired from their work only because the employers check
their Facebook profile or another social networks profile and they find something that
compromise them.
Danah Boyd (2007) “has criticized the reluctance to hire people based on the fact that they have or
are taking part in online social networking” (in A. Albrechtstund 2008, p.11). Maybe employers
take their judgment on a photo or a simply wrong information that they read. Frequently the
information gathered from companies or the state, or information that your friends post about
you, are not completely true or they are simply incomplete. So the fact is that we have to pay

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attention on what we share and with who we share our information. To pretend much privacy
firstly we have to guarantee it by ourselves, simply to stop sharing every kind of information, or
information that could be compromise us with anyone else.
In relation to what we have just say protect privacy it is an hard and delicate matter. With this big
change due to web 2.0 and social networks and in consequence of these two levels spreading of
surveillance, should we think that laws and regulations that are in act today are enough to protect
our privacy?
“In the privacy statements of social network sites (SNSs), it appears that SNS are just another
application on the Web […], the implication being that privacy challenges and problems are
comparable to other Web applications, such as eCommerce, and therefore can be solved with the
same privacy preservation methods.” (S. Preibusch 2007, p. 1)
To answer to the question above we find four critical point that explains that maybe today laws
and regulations have to be reshaped and there is the need to find new ethics.
The first point is that some laws go in contrast with some practices related to the gathering and
storing of data, for example in the EU privacy legislations “two of the data protection
practices…are incompatible with the data mining techniques that underlie consumer surveillance.
First, the use of data cannot be clearly specified to the consumer. Second, because the principle of
limiting the use of information defeats the very purpose for the collection and use of consumer
data.” (D. Lyon et al. 2006, p.41)
Second, the most part of laws in act are different from state to state and this cause problems, in
specific the fact that many social network sites have their seat in different parts of the world, and
their servers too. This means in case of legal problem for privacy infringement, that you are not
always covered by your national jurisdiction.
We should suggest that the regulation shouldn’t be different from state to state, but it is difficult
to assert this because as we previous said every state has its culture, its history and a different
concept of the understanding of privacy.
Third point concerned the fact that “data protection model was no longer up to the job, and that it
needed a more encompassing framework of ethical principles to cover more than just information
privacy, and to cover surveillance in a more substantive way. (G. T. Marx 1998 in D. Lyon et al.
2006) […] Moreover, privacy and data protection laws do not easily regulate a wide range of
surveillance practices, such as those that are part of modern telecommunications, and cannot
easily be interpreted expansively to do so.” (D. Lyon et al. 2006, p.83)

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Fourth, “privacy is not just about data protection, or about restricting the access to, or the
processing of, personal data. It is also about who can edit which data (e.g., information about
individuals or groups), how people want to and can interact with a site and other users what
different private, public, and shared spaces they can create for their lives, how they can separate
and share identities between these spaces, etc.” (S. Preibusch 2007, p.5)

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Third Chapter
Surveillance, the sense of self and identity
We have at the moment only two players in our match: surveillance and privacy. And one arbiter,
represented to SNSs. We have discussed changes about surveillance and its contradictions related
to privacy. But now we want to call others players because the match is much more hard than
expected. Our new players are identity and self.
In short we want to know how can we talk about concepts like the self and the identity in relation
to the surveillance and privacy.
New electronic media have influenced the change in social behaviours, also because concepts like
surveillance and privacy were changing by time and boundaries between public sphere and private
sphere were blurring. All these concepts have contributed to create another sense of self and new
identities, but we cannot talk exactly of causes and consequences of the phenomena. It is possible
to assert that the changing is a continuum flow of changes, in which phenomena are mixed,
becoming at the same time possible causes and consequences.
Swiss suggests that "we understand our mediated selves as reformed versions of earlier mediated
selves. Whenever our identity is mediated in this way, it is also 'remediated' - reconstructed and
refashioned from earlier media forms." (Swiss, 2000 p.18)
He continues to say that we like our identity in terms of shifting, multiple, cause of the Web and
associated Internet technologies, together with radio and television. Definitely “a networked self is
displacing the Cartesian and printed self as a cultural paradigm. This networked self is organized
like the Web itself, as a constantly changing set of affiliations or links. At any given moment, an
individual is defined by the connections that she chooses to establish with other individuals, activity
groups, and religious and secular organizations." (Swiss, 2000 p.26)
Anna Reading also offers a similar point of view about the question, and she considers the
surveillance linked to the concept of self in a new perspective. SNSs have given life a performative
surveillance and they “offer new possibilities for staging the self and its co-construction with other
users.” (A. Reading, 2009 p.94)
3. Need to be watched or control of oneself
In this process of co-construction with others our self becomes a coded-self in which plays a
particular role the concept of audience. The question of the importance of the audience seems to

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be older than we think. Joshua Meyrowitz treats this question when discusses the impact of
electronic media on social behaviours in his No sense of place.
When Meyrowitz wrote it was the 1986, computers and the Internet were being born, but he's
work can be more actual to what we think for the effort to realize a theory that link Goffman and
McLuhan's works.
Thinking to what had asserted Goffman, Meyrowitz reaffirms that each of us play in a multiplicity
of roles on different social stages and for each "audience" we offer a different version of
ourselves.
So "Goffman suggests that such role performances are necessary for the ordinary and smooth flow
of social life. In any given interaction, we need to know what to expect of each other”(J.
Meyrowitz, 1986 p.28) and “when we enter a social setting , we want and need to know something
about the situation and the other participants."(J. Meyrowitz, 1986 p.28) For Meyrowitz we are
constantly mobilizing our “energies to create socially meaningful "impression". (J. Meyrowitz,
1986 p.29) People do this in a face-to-face interaction and in real life, but what happens when we
focus on the impact of new electronic media and technologies?
It seems that many of the things that we do are turned to our audience because we want to
control ourselves to satisfied our “need to watch and be watched”. (A. Reading, 2009 p.93) This is
also a consequence of the change in the concept of surveillance and its contradictions.
Nowadays the question of audience could seems more complicated than have described Goffman
and Meyrowitz. A Psychologist like Patricia Wallace talks about the online persona saying that ”is
playing a larger role in first impressions as people rely on email, Web sites, and discussion forums
more for the first contact, and the phone, call, letter, or face-to-face meeting less.” (P. Wallace,
1999 p.14)
She argues that our cognitive skills are become miser, in a sense of the concept of cognitive miser,
a term coined by social psychologist Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor. The term has used “to describe
our interest in conserving energy and reducing cognitive load. It would be too time-consuming to
collect comprehensive information to form unique impressions of everyone we meet, so we overuse
certain cues that serve as rules of thumb."(P. Wallace, 1999 p.19/20) It seems we are coming in a
vicious circle in which we need to control ourselves more than before.
"Our cognitive miserliness emerges in the tendency to use categories and stereotypes to form
impressions about people, regardless of the person's own behaviour."(P. Wallace, 1999 p.21)
Through some studies "researchers have found that the impression you make is also the result of

24. 24
your observers' preconceived biases and stereotypes. We are all, in a sense, 'naive scientists' who
develop our own theories of human behaviour based on our experiences with other people, our
culture, the media, and our family traditions." (P. Wallace, 1999 p.21)
In this sense Patricia Wallace explains how the cognitive miser contributes to categorizing personal
identities. The dark side of this process come up when we don’t want change our impression
about a person. We attack a label for each person of our audience and we are reluctant to rethink
our critical first impression. (P.Wallace) This phenomena is called confirmation bias, because when
we search information on people we try to find those that confirm our first impression. This
phenomena seems to be common in SNSs. Therefore our self is co-constructed by others because
we need to watch and to be watched by our personal audience. It is an audience that we construct
by a cognitive process of research and It seems that it is constructed by the help of our cognitive
miser.
Exists a stage of our life that Wallace calls imaginary audience. “During this stage in life, many
people seem to overestimate how much others are watching and evaluating, so they feel unduly
self-conscious about the impression they are making." (P. Wallace, 1999 p.34) For Wallace this
stage of life is more present in the age of high school, because when we grow “we decide exactly
what to say and how to say it, and which personality traits we want to feature." Is it totally true?
What happens if we think to our behaviours in SNSs context? Maybe our need to watch and to be
watched is stronger than our effort to control our self.
3.1 Surveillance like a vicious circle
Our discussion about an imaginary audience that contribute to construct our identities and our
self coded constrain us to think that we live in what Jacob Liina Jensen calls mutual surveillance.
For Jensen the concept of surveillance is hardly new. He compares our society with the medieval
society in which “the small close-knit communities of medieval Europe contained little possibility of
escape from the constant observation of others, thereby creating tight social boundaries and
stable hierarchies." (J.L. Jensen, 2007 p.367)
While in medieval time surveillance was direct and personal, in contemporary societies it is
mediated, like our sense of self and our identities. He says that surveillance is making less personal
and less visible. About this point Jensen discusses about the two mutual surveillance and
observation: 'panopticon' and 'synopticon' in which the first refers to few that watch the many,
the second to the many that watch the few.

25. 25
As pointed out by Jensen “the mediated surveillance of electronically networked digital media
combines the two phenomena. We are currently witnessing an 'omnopticon', where everybody
watches everybody via a complicated networked of mutual, mediated surveillance, mass media
phenomena and 24/7 activities on the Internet." (J.L. Jensen, 2007 p.371)
This is because, in part, citizens are convinced that "the surveillance is for their own good”, “the
members of the public agree that they are monitored for their own good”. (J.L. Jensen, 2007 p.371)
And now, in a web 2.0 panorama, not only 'citizens' can be convinced about that but 'users' that
generate content.
When Jensen continues to say that "when everything is potentially observed and mediated,
everything becomes political"(J.L. Jensen, 2007 p.371) we think immediately to a possible analogy
with the concept of blurred boundaries.
"Some would claim that mutual observation is part of the public space but not the public
sphere"(J.L. Jensen, 2007 p.370), but a public sphere have to be understood such as full of
meanings like democracy, political views, dynamics of power and the" processes of mutual
observation are often an important aspect of the modern public sphere.” (J.L. Jensen, 2007 p.370)
So not only “boundaries between the public and private are and were constantly negotiated" (J.L.
Jensen, 2007 p.362) but, as Jensen says, we are also in presence of a public space versus public
sphere.
We think SNSs increase this characteristic of blurred boundaries. And for this reason "when
everything is potentially observed and mediated, everything becomes political"! (J.L. Jensen, 2007
p.371)
Another interesting point that can be understood like cause of blurred boundaries, is the
conception that power is not more in the hand of few but it is "dispersed and it becomes more
difficult to trace the responsible agents". (J.L. Jensen, 2007 p.371) For this reason it will be
necessary have again more surveillance, and then more privacy to contrast the surveillance.
Are we entering in a vicious circle? Luckily Jensen talks about information and communication
technologies like “potentially make it possible to re-create the much-praised and idealised political
community of ancient Athens” (J. L. Jensen, 2007 p.367), they are not only cause of a society based
on a mutual surveillance. Is it an hope or a mere utopia?
Even if we don't want re-create an idealised political community we would certainly live in a
democratic society in which it is possible construct our identity consciously .

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Four Chapter
A case of study: Facebook
Why Facebook as case of study?
- first of all because it is a social network, so it is also a web 2.0 based. As argued many times
Web 2.0 and SNSs allowed changes in the concept of surveillance, privacy and in concepts
of the changing of the self and identities.
- secondly Facebook is the most popular social network in the world.
- in the end, the nature of Facebook is controversial, in relation to surveillance and privacy
issues.
On Facebook we found all features related to the two types of surveillance that we analyzed: one
related to the panoptical view and the other related to a participatory and performative
surveillance.
4. Facebook and Surveillance
Facebook is a social network site created and launched by Mark Zuckerber, an Harvard student,
the 4th
of February in the 2004. It was born like a tool to keep in contact Harvard students but
“within two months all the Ivy League schools are included and over the next two years more
universities, high schools and corporations are added.” (I. Bergstrom 2008) Today, in 2010,
Facebook is the most used social network in the world because it has 400.000.000 of users
subscribed (A. Longo 2010).
As Facebook says “one of the primary reasons people use Facebook is to share content with others.
Examples include when you update your status, upload or take a photo, upload or record a video,
share a link, create an event or a group, make a comment, write something on someone’s Wall,
write a note, or send someone a message.” (Facebook PP, content)
By the way there are people that suggest that maybe Facebook is not an idea created by an
Harvard student, but it is an instrument of surveillance developed by the CIA to spy us and check
our very personal information. There are a series of factors and dynamics behind that could bring
us to think about a “CIA conspiracy”9
.
As we suggest before in Facebook we could find the two levels of surveillance. On the one hand
our data are gathered by Facebook and companies linked to Facebook for marketing strategies. On
9
Matt Greenop, “Facebook – The CIA conspiracy” http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12685

27. 27
the other hand Facebook is a social network site where people share information with their
friends and often with all the online world, so your friends could see information about you all the
time, your photos, interests, who are your friends and you can do also the same. We put each
others under surveillance, many people that watch other many people.
During the year Facebook has changed its terms of services and his privacy policy because there
were lots of problems concerned with privacy, also today there are lots of tricky points about the
gathering and storing of the data.
In this view we are going to explain how today these two kinds of surveillance caused problems
with privacy.
Facebook suggests that there are many reasons because of the gathering of data, they want to
“try to provide a safe, efficient, and customised experience” (Facebook PP, 5), doing this Facebook
ensures to pay attention to the users’ privacy claiming that “your privacy is very important to
us”(Facebook TOS, 1). But after an analysis of the terms of service and privacy policy we could
continue to assert that this claim is not completely true, there are some tricky points.
Our information are gathered and collected by Facebook, applications connected to Facebook and
by search engines for marketing purposes, for example to direct advertising to a specific group.
For doing this our data are categorised, checked and stored, but we could say that what for
Facebook is a benefit - to know better their users to guarantee a customised experience on the
use of service - for us it is a disadvantage because our privacy is invaded and we are put under
surveillance all the time.
Facebook says about the data that we post in our online profile:
“For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"),
you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings:
you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use
any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends
when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others,
and they have not deleted it.” (Facebook TOS, 2. 1)
Facebook tracks your online information history, every actions doing by you or by the others in
your profile (like post a video), it records your IP address and what kind of browser you use in
your computer and it looks what are your interests related to your surfing on the net.
Facebook collects our data for many reasons to improve its site, to serve specific advertising, to
check against illegal or anomalous issues. An example about the specific advertising is that, if you

28. 28
are passionate in one thing, Facebook could give your information to the search engines to grant
you personalised advs.
Moreover in the TOS Facebook continue to say about the use of application linked to it:
“When you use an application, your content and information is shared with the
application”(Facebook TOS, 3)
An application or a partner web site linked to Facebook could take your general personal data
from your profile. This kind of data are always visible in your profile from anyone else and they
aren’t protected by the privacy policy, because Facebook suggest that if you want to join a social
network there are some data like your name and your profile picture that are the base of your
profile, these are something that allow other people to find you, socialise with you and keep in
contact with you. Plus there are other data like your friends, age, location, political view, interests
(and can be other more if you don’t put any filters) that could be gathered if you have decided to
show them to all the world. In fact “when you publish content or information using the "everyone"
setting, it means that you are allowing everyone, including people off of Facebook, to access and
use that information, and to associate it with you (i.e., your name and profile picture).” (Facebook
TOS, 2. 4)
Since your information are transferred from Facebook to another application, Facebook isn’t
responsible anymore for that, at this point you have to refer to the privacy policy of the
application you joint, Facebook explains clear this point on the TOS: “WE TRY TO KEEP FACEBOOK
UP, BUG-FREE, AND SAFE, BUT YOU USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK. WE DO NOT GUARANTEE THAT
FACEBOOK WILL BE SAFE OR SECURE. FACEBOOK IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACTIONS,
CONTENT, INFORMATION, OR DATA OF THIRD PARTIES” (15. 3)
Another point is that Facebook is linked, from April 2010, to many partner web sites, this means
that they can also collect your general data to provide you specific advs since the moment that
you join or “like” this partner web sites. This is what they called instant personalization.
But how many people know that Facebook applications aren’t own by Facebook? Do they know
what will happen to theirs data? Unfortunately lots of people are unaware about these things.
Beyond this point to the collecting and storing of data by Facebook and Facebook apps, we don’t
have to forget that Facebook plays a role on the other side of surveillance, participatory
surveillance. This also bring us many problems related to privacy and become a form of social
pillory.

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“One study at the University of North Carolina, for example, found more than 60 percent of
Facebook users posted their political views, relationship status, personal picture, interests and
address. People also post a whopping 14 million personal photos every single day, making
Facebook the top photo website in the country.” (A. Melber 2008)
Many people are ignorant about problems that could be concern the sharing of personal
information with others and don’t know privacy settings or terms of service, because usually they
don’t read that. So they continue to divulge information because, as we said before, they
recognise in social networks like Facebook a value for the self expression and the user
empowerment, a benefit in knowing different people and share with them, demonstrating that
they are alive in the online world and fundamentally watch and be watched by the others.
We could talk also for our experience and for our friends too. We all spend a lot of time using
Facebook, looking at the others profile, adding more and more information, likes and dislikes.
Facebook it is like an addiction! Every morning at the university, each of our friends, when turn on
the pc, immediately check their Facebook profiles and look what the others have added in their
profiles.
This kind of performative surveillance caused many problems with privacy. “When you post
information on another user’s profile or comment on another user’s post, that information will be
subject to the other user’s privacy settings” (Facebook PP, other)
You have to know that your information are also spread on the basis of the privacy settings of your
friends, in this sense some part of your information could be seen by all the world.
Moreover you have to think also that your information are stored in Facebook database even if
you deactivate or delete your account. Firstly Facebook says that if you want to deactivate your
account they save all your stuff in case you would like to reactivate it. Secondly, even if you
deactivate or delete your account, stuff is stored for a certain period of time in Facebook
database, but information you have shared in your friends profile remain online and viewable
elsewhere (if your friends don’t delete that) and information gathered by applications too. We
have to know, as Facebook says in the Privacy Policy, “that information might be reshared or
copied by other users” and also by companies.
But the most of people when use Facebook don’t think and don’t know about these.

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4.1 Filters of Facebook
For these reasons Facebook has had some filters, that allow us to set what information we want to
share and with whom. We can limit the access to our information or block it to our friends, or
applications.
“You can select a privacy setting for every post you make using the publisher on our site. Whether
you are uploading a photo or posting a status update, you can control exactly who can see it at the
time you create it. Whenever you share something look for the lock icon. Clicking on the lock will
bring up a menu that lets you choose who will be able to see your post. If you decide not to select
your setting at the time you post the content, your content will be shared consistent with your
Posts by Me default privacy”(Facebook PP, posts by me), that it is in the “everywhere” status. So
remember if you don’t do this your information could be seen by your friends, friends of friends
and people that you don’t know.
But as we said before many people are unaware of this. Facebook advertised this possibility only
in pop-up windows that for sure many people didn’t read and closed it. Also Facebook allows you
to change what do you want share (and with whom), or decide other things like allow or block an
application through your privacy settings, as you can see in the picture below.

31. 31
In this way the user could control better his information, could preserve his privacy better, and
could avoid to be under surveillance too much. But even if you put some filters, there are general
information that could be gathered by applications, web sites, search engine and anyone else, like
your name and your profile picture. But if you don’t put any filter on your profile and you leave the
setting ‘everywhere’. What might happen? Everyone could see and gather all your stuff (photos,
interests, ideas, beliefs…). Many people use Facebook like a game, use many application without
think that there are different privacy policy and terms of use. Share with everyone their
information.
Rather if a person knows these issues and decides to restrict the access to his/her profile. What
might happen? In a social network you are linked with other people. If your friends left open the
access to their profile someone else could also, in part, check your activity, see and gather
information about you (even if you are offline), in order of what you share with/in your friends
profile (videos, interests, tag). So even if you are trying to protect your privacy the others can
record information about you that you have shared in your friends profile.
Another point is when a friend tag you on Facebook, you can only remove the tag, but your photo
remains online in your friend’s profile and it could also be seen by friends of your friend or may be
by all the web. Instead if you forget to remove the tag, every person that search on you can see in
general information and photos tagged of you, because there are no restriction to see them.

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We could demonstrate that with Facebook we are under surveillance all the time, by institutions,
companies and by our friends or friends of friends. We should pay attention of what kind of data
we share and with whom, so before start to use filters to protect our privacy firstly we have to
protect us limiting what we share online .
4.2 Recent events on Facebook privacy
We saw how Facebook made worse relationship between privacy and its users. Some events
demonstrate that the problem of Facebook privacy is debated in a international panorama.
Now government organisations have to control also that SNSs don't violate the privacy of users,
but as we said in the second chapter many laws are old and the new regulations often belong to
external bodies.
Recent events underline the increase of phenomena in which government institutions recall to
order SNSs on privacy settings.
Facebook has been recently accused of make worse its relationship with privacy and between
privacy and users because it has creating more and more applications that violate our privacy.
Through the Working Party10
all privacy guarantors sent a letter to the SNS to remember contents
of the article 29 of the advisory body (May 2010). The letter regarded polemics about ways in
which the SNS manage personal data of its 400 million of users. One of the last modifications that
Facebook has done is the instant personalization that allows that other sites can use personal
information published by users. When users go to a site partner there will be a customize page
with their information and information about their friends. At the moment the main partners that
access to the service are Microsoft’s Docs.com, Yelp and Pandora.
What privacy guarantors want to remark it is need to protect profiles by the third party
applications. Social operator providers should use personal data only if users give their free and
unambiguous consent.
As Ryan Singel11
debates “Facebook decided to turn 'your' profile page into your identity online —
figuring, rightly, that there’s money and power in being the place where people define themselves.
But to do that, the folks at Facebook had to make sure that the information you give it was
public.”(Wired 7may 2010 Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It is Time for an Open Alternative)
10
An international organisation that represented also a specific advisory body on data protection of privacy.
11
Ryan Singel is a San Francisco-based blogger and journalist covering civil liberty and privacy issues. His work has
appeared extensively in Wired News.

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So “simultaneously, the company began shipping your profile information off pre-emptively to
Yelp, Pandora and Microsoft — so that if you show up there while already logged into Facebook,
the sites can 'personalize' your experience when you show up. You can try to opt out after the fact,
but you’ll need a master’s in Facebook bureaucracy to stop it permanently.” (Wired, 7may 2010
Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It is Time for an Open Alternative)
4.3 Facebook and “itself”
We have said that ICT affected social behaviours and they are continuing to do that.
As already hinted, one of the most important works about changing in social behaviours is No
Sense of Place of J. Meyrowitz. What we interest in his work is the part in which Goffman describe
social life as a multistaged drama. In his view each of us perform different roles in different social
arenas depending on the nature of the situation, on our particular role in it and on the makeup of
the audience. Regarding this point Meyrowitz suggests that we cannot talk about specific
situations in specific contexts, because boundaries between private and public and between public
space and public sphere are blurred. There is not any more a “traditional” conception of space in
which a specific behaviour can happens.
In fact “it can be argued that: (1) behaviour patterns divide into as many definitions as there are
distinct settings, and (2) when two or more settings merge, their distinct definitions merge into one
new definition.”(J. Meyrowitz, 1986 p.46) When two situations merge people can be develop a
new situation that it is the synthesis of the two previous. (J. Meyrowitz, 1986 p.46)
Regarding to the concepts of back and front region of Goffman12
, Meyrowitz says "whatever
aspects of the rehearsal become visible to the audience must be integrated into the show itself;
whatever backstage time and space remain hidden can still be used to perfect the performance.
When dividing line between onstage and backstage behaviors moves in either direction, the nature
of the drama changes accordingly.”(J. Meyrowitz, 1986 p.47) Using these concepts “the new
behaviour that arises out of merging situations could be called 'middle region' behaviour.”13
(J.
Meyrowitz, 1986 p.47)
12
See: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Erving Goffman, 1959; Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of
Interaction, Erving Goffman, 1961; Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings, 1963.
13
Conversely, the two new sets of behaviours that result from the division of situations could be called "deep back
region" behaviour and 'forefront region' behaviour. Middle region behaviour develops when audience members gain a
'sidestage' view."(J. Meyrowitz, 1986 p.47)

34. 34
The new pattern of behaviours also often lack the extremes of the former backstage behaviour
because the new middle region dramas are public” and “therefore, performers adapt as much as
possible to the presence of the audience, but continue to hide whatever can still be hidden." (J.
Meyrowitz, 1986 p.47)
Thinking that new media tend “to merge existing information-systems will lead to more
'sidestage', or 'middle region', behaviours”(J. Meyrowitz, 1986 p.49) we argue that Facebook
behaviours take place in middle stage or sidestage setting of behaviours in the sense that “our”
middle stage can be created also by others, because also others add information to our profile.
Result that you cannot control everything.
We could maintain that, regarding a macro vision, social behaviours live in a middle stage co-
constructed by others both, in a micro vision, the self is co-constructed by others. But on
Facebook, how this condition is it verifiable?
First of all we think on the structure of the social network that allows to do this. We mean all
possibilities that Facebook offers to manage your profile: comments of your photos, or posts or
links; tagging system; system notifications; the system of general notices in the Home. We refer
specifically all actions that you do in your profile, all actions that others do in your profile, and all
actions that you do in others' profiles. This kind of mix of possible actions create a blend that can
be interpreted as coded-self.
4.4 Are we in the centre of our network?
When we talked about the self and identities we also argued that SNSs contribute to construct a
certain kind of self. Regarding to the concept of Wellman of “networked individualism”(e.g. 1988;
Wellman et al., 2003 in Baym et al., 2009 p.385), individuals sit at the centre of their personal
communities.
If we think about Facebook can we consider us in the centre of our network?
We argue that it is not so true. You can consider yourself at the centre of your network reasoning
upon the only definition of “networked individualism”, because in your profile there are all things
that belong you. So if we think about Facebook practices you are in the centre of your network
only thinking to what can you do to manage your profile: tagging, uploading, commenting etc...
About our question we try to keep track another reasoning. Briefly as Baym argues we can identify
a social network by expanding outwards “outwards to include that person's acquaintances and the
interconnections among those acquaintances” (Nancy K. Baym et al., 2009, p.385) In fact you often

35. 35
accept people that you don't know so much, even if “these sites are more used to replicate
connections that exist offline than to build new ones”(Nancy K. Baym et al., 2009 p.386)
Within this kind a social network your profile is changeable by a large number of “friends”. In our
opinion it emerge a sort of competition among contacts that it is latent. Each of us try to upload or
to do something of great, cool.
Regarding this argument fit like a glove what Baym says: “SNSs can also lead to new sorts of
relationships such as those that emerge between fans and celebrities."(Nancy K. Baym et al., 2009
p.396) It can create "micro celebrities or even relative unknowns, as friend links may be formed
simply because a person admires another user's" amusing web links, provocative conceptual
musings, and attractive artistic output" (Fono & Raynes-Goldie, 2006, n.p.; see also Lange, 2007 in
Nancy K. Baym et al., 2009 p.386). For example it depends to how many “I like” do you have or if
your post, link, photo appears between popular notices. So we try to be at the centre of our
network but in reality we have to “fight” against with other dynamics.
4.5 Stereotypes and social pillory
Linked to what we have said previously there is the audience matter, in the sense of will of control
the image of ourselves. In the third chapter we talked about the problem of cognitive miser: we
have to preserve our cognitive energies for the control of our image, so we construct first
impressions and stereotypes about people. Regarding that our question is what happens on
Facebook? Do we use stereotypes?
Yes we do. The answer is hidden to the argument of social pillory. Some kind of practices related
to our cognitive miser and first impressions can flow into cases of social pillory. Cases can people
that are not employed because employers control their profiles, or students that are monitored by
their professors. Speaking plainly this happens because “the architecture of these sites already
facilitates all kinds of surveillance of unsuspecting users by the public.” (Ari Melber, The Nation
January 16, 2008)
By the article of Ari Melber, Facebook: the new look of surveillance, we suggest some cases can be
cause of social pillory. A student from the Catholic Arkansas's John Brown University expelled after
administrator discovered via Facebook pictures of him dressed in drag and a Secret Service officer
visit a student of to University of Oklahoma in his dormitory because he posted a comment on the
Facebook group “Bush Sucks”. (Ari Melber, The Nation January 16, 2008)

36. 36
Other examples are represented by cases in which employers check Facebook to vet job
applicants. It is hard to imagine that “from Los Angeles to Lowestoft, thousands of social network
site users have lost their jobs – or failed to clinch new ones – because of their pages' contents.
Police, colleges and schools are monitoring MySpace and Facebook pages for what they deem to
be 'inappropriate' content.” The problem is what you add up to your profile, because it seems that
“online social networking can seriously damage your life.”(independent.co.uk, Ida Bergstrom,
February 2008) A survey “ released by Viadeo14
said that 62 per cent of British employers now
check the Facebook, MySpace or Bebo pages of some applicants, and that a quarter had rejected
candidates as a result.”(independent.co.uk, Ida Bergstrom, February 2008)
Regarding to students that are monitored by their professors many UK educational institutions
constantly encourage faculty and students to use SNSs, because they think them improve learning
of process and the academic information system. (A. Reading, 2009 p.99)
One of UK university professors has been interviewed about this decisions adopted by his
university and he said: “I do watch students, because there are a lot of them and it is any easy way
of finding out what they are up to. Our boss has encouraged us to use Facebook in this way. I'm not
spying on them because they are smart enough to know how it works.”(A. Reading, 2009 p.99)
Professors “also used Facebook to track the whereabouts of their students who may have
'disappeared' or failed to hand in assignments. One university academic cited the example of a
student who had 'gone off radar' and failed to hand in some work for assessment. The student had
e-mailed to ask for an extension claiming he was ill. The professor then discovered via Facebook
that the student was actually enjoying himself at a music festival.” (A. Reading, 2009 p.99)
For Melber similar events happen because young people usually add their lives in minute detail,
exposure them. Even if an SNS is a free service it abdicate control of personal information like a
high price to pay. (Ari Melber, The Nation January 16, 2008)
In the case of Facebook all these cases of social pillory are created because “most people don't use
the privacy settings to limit access to their Facebook profile. Four out of five simply accept the
default setting, which allows their whole network to see the entire profile.“(Ari Melber, The Nation
January 16, 2008) And as Anna Reading reports the majority of us not have read Facebook policy
because “people deliberately playing with the boundaries of the self in the knowledge of being
watched by their 'friends' as well as the authorities.” (A. Reading, 2009 p.99)
14
Viadeo is a Web 2.0 professional social network founded in May 2004 by Dan Serfaty

37. 37
4.6 “Feel at home” on Facebook
Continuing our reasoning it is useful reflect another time on the mutual surveillance concept of
Jacob Jensen. Here the essence of our discussion can be translated by the sentence “I don't
perceive that I'm under surveillance, because I live in a mutual surveillance society”, in which
relationship between people and technologies are often latent and not explicit.
In fact we noted that users think to be protected from SNS, they “feel at home” in their profile and
they are often not informed that their privacy can be violated, such as always happens on
Facebook.
The case is evident, not until something happens with repercussions for my life I continue to join
on Facebook, and that's because I cannot perceive the “danger”. Can we talk to a sort of
selfishness toward oneself? That can explain phenomena like the recent announce of a massive
suicide of the Facebook followers. People have surely done a sort of “word of mouth” but in
reality they don't know exactly why they’ll suicide. Are they exactly conscious what they risk
joining on Facebook?
We said, through Jensen's words, that “When everything is potentially observed and mediated,
everything becomes political”. (J.L. Jensen, p.371) This situation cause many consequences, in
particular if we talk about social pillory, because we are more exposed to “social eyes” and under
surveillance.
Regarding social pillory question and interpreting what Jensen said when he compares our digital
society to a medieval society, we argue that social pillory phenomena can rise also from users to
who have the power in a way that seems to be similar to medieval rebellions. For example many
people think that the solution to protect their privacy from Facebook attack it could be the famous
massive suicide.
4.7 An OFF always under surveillance
We live in a mutual surveillance society because, as previously told, ICT (Information
Communication Technologies) make boundaries between public space and public sphere more
blurred. So we are not able to perceive exactly when and where specifics situations can take place.
Before when we stop to do something in online world we can turn off our computer or simply go
offline. Now actions that we have started in an online modality can continue in an offline modality.
Because everything is mixed and blurred.

38. 38
If we think specifically to Facebook dynamics we realize that we live NOT in an on-off perspective,
and our offline activity is under surveillance and under the flow of information. The Off is under
surveillance too. Therefore when you are offline, on Facebook, other people can continue to
manage your profile. This means that social dynamic directions move from offline to online.
Conversely when people start a discussion relatively on situation that has been verified on
Facebook, social dynamic directions remain to an offline modality even if the situation it is relative
to an online modality. Indeed modalities from online to offline are those more commons.
"Ellison and colleagues (2007) note that 'in earlier online relationship work, the direction of social
network overlap was usually movement from online to offline'. Research on SNSs has emphasized
movement in the opposite direction. While recognizing that SNSs 'may facilitate making new
friends' (Ellison et al.,2007, n.p.), they seem to be more often used for keeping in touch with people
one has met elsewhere." (Nancy K. Baym et al., 2009 p.10)
4.8 Who has the power?
When we talked about the concept of the power in relation to the surveillance we underlined an
interesting cue to chew on, namely with Jensen words, the power is “dispersed and it becomes
more difficult to trace the responsible agents”. (J.L. Jensen, p.371) This concept lead us to reflect
upon many applications and concepts embedded on Facebook.
One of the many examples it is the functioning of the instant personalization system, already
hinted before. First of all because with this mechanism even if you have all pages customized, your
web navigation is traceable. Are dangerous also applications that you usually accept when you
want to play a game or when you want to do a test about your personality and then publish to
your profile. All these information can be taken by third party and you don't know when they can
do it. In reality you can check each of third party's privacy policies, but these are often difficult to
find. And Facebook doesn't guarantee if their bring or not your data or your contents.
So have you ever thought third party or Facebook can steal your ideas? If you have uploaded a
project because you are a student of design or an student of architecture or an artist, they can use
your concept, your works, your art may be for advertising or what else?
In April 2010, for example, Facebook made a changing regarding pages. Previously they were
'official', “which meant that the administrator could legitimately prove that they represented the
organization in question, or 'unofficial', which means that they either couldn't prove they

39. 39
represented the organization or, in many cases, represented something that didn't actually
exist”.(Article Facebook's Plan to Steal Your Pages Apr 13, 2010)
Under Facebook's new organization scheme “when users set up a new page, they can choose
either to create an 'official' page, or a 'community page'.”(Article Facebook's Plan to Steal Your
Pages Apr 13, 2010)
New terms say that “once an 'unofficial' or 'community' page 'becomes very popular' (all signs
indicate that means it has more than 10,000 fans), the page will 'be adopted and maintained by
the Facebook community'.”(Facebook TOS)
So “if you create a good community page, and it gets very popular, Facebook will steal it away
from you and remove your admin rights. Facebook will reward you for your hard work by stealing
your group right out from under you.” (Article Facebook's Plan to Steal Your Pages, 2010)
As argued by the author of the article “nobody likes to feel like someone's snatched something
they worked hard to create right out from under them.”(Article Facebook's Plan to Steal Your
Pages, 2010)
If you read Terms and Contents of Facebook you'll find written condition that your comments are
welcomes but the social network can save and use them freely, such as you can comment in
complete freedom. (Facebook TOS)
In conclusion all arguments reported in this chapter reveal contradictions of Facebook: born to
allow sharing of contents freely and simply only with your friends, but in reality public to third
party not included in your list of friends. In our opinion Facebook is in favour of demagogic
choices.
Nevertheless "One thing that is new about Web 2.0 is that the domains in which people generated
their content are now often for-profit enterprises." (Nancy K. Baym et al., 2009 p.384)
Facebook is an example. Nowadays seems to be like your contents are its benefit.
That's because it is important to rethink to new ethics. Previously we treated the question under
SNSs perspective telling that “we need to understand ethics and the coded-self within virtual
surveillance not only in terms of space but in terms of time, as durational.” (A. Reading, 2009
p.100) In this sense “Facebook ethics are situated within a new form of performative surveillance
in spacetime.”(A. Reading, 2009 p.101)

40. 40
Fifth Chapter
New ethics
In third chapter we suggest through Jensen that information and communication technologies
“potentially make it possible to re-create the much-praised and idealised political community of
ancient Athens”J.L. Jensen, 2007 p.367). Then we argued that even if we don't want re-create an
idealised political community we would certainly live in a democratic society in which it is possible
construct our identity consciously . If we would live in a democratic society in which it is possible
construct our identity consciously, what kind of choices should we do?
Ethic can be defined as the research of one of more criteria that allow us to manage our freedom
in the respect of the others. The Ethic perspective enter in our discussion like a very important
theme primarily in a today's panorama characterized by the presence of new technologies and, in
our case, specifically from SNSs.
As Anna Reading argues “the advent of SNSs such as Facebook suggest that we reappraise how we
think about ethics in relation to the Foucauldian panoptical model of surveillance.” (A. Reading,
2009 p.100) “We need to understand ethics and the coded self within virtual surveillance not only
in terms of space but in terms of time, as durational”(A. Reading, 2009 p.100) and “Facebook
ethics are situated within a new form of performative surveillance in spacetime.” (A. Reading, 2009
p.100)
As it is emerged from our case of study on Facebook it is difficult to capture all shades that turn
around the theme of the ethic. There are different meanings that are linked each others and many
levels in which consider changes of new ethics.
As Anders Albrechtslund and Lynsey Dubbeld argue "surveillance is not just a steady growing
security industry theatre quires critical debate and extensive academic analysis;
surveillance can also serve as a source of enjoyment, pleasure and fun, as is evidenced in the
entertainment industry.” (Anders Albrechtslund and Lynsey Dubbeld, 2005 p.5)
Different meanings and levels live within that we called participatory surveillance, thinking to the
assert of Anna Reading. It is therefore necessary “include an analysis of the more entertaining
sides of surveillance in Surveillance Studies so as to balance the academic debate on contemporary
surveillance practices." (Anders Albrechtslund and Lynsey Dubbeld, 2005 p.5) Also in an ethic
perspective.

41. 41
In relation to what we have told before we can distinguish between four sphere in which we verify
the need to rethink our ethic methods: one ethic related to right methods for design SNSs; one
ethic related to research methods; one related to law and privacy concepts; and the last ethic
related to a new perspective, an ethic generated from users.
5. Click on “accept” and become a fashion victim web 2.0
In relation to our analysis about SNSs and Facebook emerge some questions like why is it difficult
to find a good way to protect privacy in a SNSs? What kind of new ethics are possible and correct?
When we accept conditions and terms of an SNS we should know what we can do and how our
privacy can change while we are share our contents. Perhaps SNSs have not blame? Are not they
responsible to the decline of privacy?
The fact is that we have to do our ethic by ourselves. We have to decide if accept or not “terms
and conditions” and we have to decide the degree share. But what make us click on accept
without know if our contents will be protected?
As A. Reading suggests, when she talks about Facebook ethic, we have to pay attention in ways in
which practices on Facebook constitute really “a shift in information ethics that are normalizing
‘performative surveillance’ ”(A. Reading, 2009 p.93), not only in research of datasurveillance.
Anna Reading suggests also through John E. McGrath that surveillance “has proliferated not least
because we desire it-we enjoy it, play with it, use it for comfort”. (A. Reading, 2009 p.97)
The question that we would to propose is: can we think our 2.0 social behaviours in terms of
conditioning by the fashion dynamics? If we need to watch and to be watched and we need to play
with surveillance, we accept terms and conditions also because we have to be present in that SNS,
we have to be part of that particular audience that we have chosen. Otherwise we are out!
Is it possible consider this behaviour like influenced by a certain fashion dynamic? Here the word
“fashion” signify the need to get something and the need to be satisfied when you write
something of great, or when you tag your friends in particular photos. In short, when you do
something with which you could be cool!
What we would suggest through the analogy between SNSs and fashion it is only a provocation or
exactly a cue to reflect if SNSs dynamics can be observed from others point of views.

42. 42
5.1 Difficulties in ethic research
When we talked about blurred boundaries and about surveillance like a vicious circle, we argued
that the power is not more in the hand of few but it is "dispersed and it becomes more difficult to
trace the responsible agents". (J.L. Jensen p.371) In our opinion this phenomena is hardly verifiable
in the panorama of new ethics researchers, together with ethic of privacy.
In the field of research is difficult to understand what is the correct way to investigate ethics
phenomena. We have a clear example to what it has happened to a group of researchers from
Harvard University and the University of California-Los Angeles. Since 2008 they have tried to
improve the functioning of a robust dataset “that would fully leverage the rich data available on
social networking websites”. (Michael Zimmer, forthcoming p.4)
They called their project Tastes, Ties, and Time. “Given its popularity, the researchers chose the
social network site Facebook as their data source, and located a university that allowed to
download the Facebook profiles of every member of the freshman class". (Michael Zimmer,
forthcoming p.4)
T3 research project owned many security procedures to protect the privacy of student identities:
"prospective users of the dataset are required to submit a brief statement detailing how the data
will be used"(Michael Zimmer, forthcoming p.7/8) and they are "also required to agree to a 'Terms
and Condition of Use'.”(Michael Zimmer, forthcoming p.7/8)
External researchers have to filled out and read these documents then they can download a
comprehensive codebook that includes “an account of the steps taken by the T3 researchers in an
attempt to protect subject privacy”.(Michael Zimmer, forthcoming p.7) A number of precautions
were taken, “all data were collected with the permission of the college being studied, the college's
Committee on the Use of Human Subjects, as well as Facebook.com.” (Michael Zimmer,
forthcoming p.7)
T3 researchers tried to protect the identity and privacy of data of students, also researchers
assistants could access to certain data and “no students were contacted for additional
information.” (Michael Zimmer, forthcoming p.15/16)
External researchers must also read and electronically sign a user agreement to access any part of
the dataset and “all identifying information was deleted or encoded immediately after the data
was downloaded.”(Michael Zimmer, forthcoming p.15/16)
As Zimmer suggests “these steps taken by the T3 researchers to remove identifying information
reveal an acknowledgement of -and sensitivity to - the privacy concerns. Their intent, as expressed